Lenten Musings 2017

6 March 2017
Over the past w/e came the 0535 hrs. Twitter storm … from Mar-a-Lago (where the much put-upon American taxpayer is shelling out millions every w/e for Enhanced Security while the upscale boutiques of West Palm Beach & environs are losing their shirts (what a shame. Not Fair).
    All kidding aside, the storm alleges that during the campaign & the interregnum, Trump was being wiretapped under orders from President Obama. (You read that correctly.) Three days into this shit storm, Trump has demanded that Congress (!!!) launch a full-blown investigation into these allegations, and Congress seems to be saying, “OK, Donnie.”)
    This is probably just what we’ve been waiting for.
    • None of the tweets has any substantiating evidence for the charges. (There are three “wiretap” rants; the next tweet is about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s departure from “Celebrity Apprentice.”)
    • I’m no lawyer, but even I understand that these charges, if false, are libelous, even though directed @ a “public figure,” and they’re actionable.
    • Why bring Congress into it? Trump is the Commander in Chief. He can have the directors of FBI, NSA, CIA, USACIC, ONI, everybody, on the carpet in 20 minutes & just demand to know: WHO THE FUCK DID THIS? But he didn’t do that; he fobbed it off on Congress (which, of course, has been so speedy gonzalez in convening hearings on the whole Trump/Russia bidness).
    • (This won’t shock you.) Trump heard this story from some wing nut radio guy who was later picked up on Breitbart. The wing nut was just hallucinating. But my guess is: He made a lucky guess. Trump IS under surveillance by his own government. Not in the White House, but Trump Tower, certainly, and definitely Mar-a-Lago (that one’s a Gift from the Gods for the snoops).
    • We have to back up a second. Everyone connected with the Obama Administration vehemently denies that they are or were wiretapping Donald Trump.
    If the Obama Adm. WAS wiretapping DJT & his campaign, then either (1) The Government got a Warrant (therefore they proved in Federal court that there was probable Cause of a Crime & we wanna’ know what) … OR (2) There was no warrant & the taps were gotten up by a freelance bunch of rogues, who intended to do … what?
    • Let’s not lose the thread here. Was Trump under surveillance? Not personally. But many, many persons he was in contact with were under surveillance (and I daresay still are). The people legally under scrutiny are all foreign nationals, you don’t need a warrant to wiretap a foreign national. Jared Kushner didn’t know that, although he maybe he does now. Mike Flynn knows now.
    • How does Trump know he was being wiretapped?
    Because over the past weekend, the Russians told him so.
    There are transcripts of him speaking with Russian operatives, and US Intelligence has them and in due time will use them. And over the weekend, Malcolm Nance and his boy Bourne did the right thing: They told their Russian counterparts the jig was up. (No one wants nuclear war; on either side).
    Trump’s response was to cook up this I’m-a-Victim-of-Wiretapping story (since rescinded & fobbed off on Congress) but it hardly matters. It’s over.

*****
    • This is All About Money, and DJT’s 1040’s (every line item of which is almost certainly “misstated,” incidentally) are now a Matter of National Security (as well as forgery, perjury & embezzlement). .
    •  “The Facts” are DJT owes the private wing of Deutsche Bank hundreds of millions of dollars he cannot pay. He’s leveraged to the hilt, and he has to keep booking Chinese government Christmas parties into the Post Office Bldg hotel just to make his nut. He’s like a puppet on a string, and Vladimir Putin, who IS the Very Richest Man on This Planet, is pulling the strings.
    What does Putin want? (Same thing Steve Bannon does) Chaos in the World Order: (1) a weakened NATO; (2) the breakup of the EU; (3) Russian military expansion in the Black Sea & especially the Mediterranean; (4) the reconstruction of the USSR; and, most important, (5) US complicity in this agenda.
    Back in the fall, Putin must’ve been pissing himself. It SO looked like he had it all. Trouble was, Vladimir Putin isn’t that smart. Trump fooled him, too! Just like he fooled all those racists in PA & MI. But he, Putin, is a real Communist, a real chiliast: he really thought he could jump-start history, do in six months what would have/should have otherwise taken a century to accomplish.
    And if “the deep state” plays this out the way I suspect they will try to, the (eventual) Fall of Trump will be the first domino in the (subsequent) Fall of Putin. And wouldn’t that be nice? 

11 March
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? It’s an old question, and you want all the gory details? Pull up wikipedia and type in the question. (I must say this, though: I first read Juvenal as a senior in high school; my version of the Saturarum [Hardy, 2nd edition, 1891], which I still own, did not include the sixth satire, which even in 1965, and in Latin, was considered too risqué for adolescent minds!) Suffice to say the context for the quip is: How to deal with a faithless wife? Or in our case, a faithless, traitorous Administration.
    What do we do about Trump and bringing him to account? Congressional hearings? House and Senate Intelligence Committees? They’re ultimately run by Republicans, who set the rules. What stops them from suppressing information? Not even bothering to call certain witnesses who could be as embarrassing to them as they would be to Trump?
    A Special Prosecutor? You have to have a legitimate suspicion that there have been Crimes committed or conspired over before you prosecute. And Trump’s own Justice Department would be running the prosecution -- with a whole bunch o’ US Attorneys recruited this week.
    How ‘bout an Independent Commission, a la the 9/11 Gang? Better than the other two; independent of Trump & Sessions, but do they have subpoena power? Or is it going to be Mitt Romney and John Kerry co-chairing, in effect, a whitewash in which no one  “remembers” or goes on the record but instead does his best impression of Rafael Palmeiro in front of the Senate Steroids Committee?
    If what I think is true … that the Russians took every advantage of the greed, venality & utter damnability of Donald Trump and his band of traitors to wheedle him and his people into power, then this is far from over. Putin has pulled us inside out. The President of the United States is a Soviet mole, with the power to do anything he wants to (1) make life easier and more lucrative for Russian autocracy; (2) make life easier and more lucrative for the rich people who bankroll the Congressional Republicans; (3) enrich himself and his sub-human family beyond the wildest dreams of avarice; and (4) Cover It All Up while he’s doing it.
    You think I’m a wing nut? Fifty Days in -- we’ve rolled over on helping maintain an independent Ukraine & let Soviet military power loose in the Eastern Mediterranean … let McConnell & Ryan turn health care over to the tender mercies of “the Market” = millions dumped off the rolls, massive tax cuts for the richest few thousands of Americans, higher insurance premiums for millions more; fuck you cuts for the oldest, the poorest, the most infirm, the disabled, all of whom rely on Medicaid … China (!!) has granted Trump 38 new trademarks and patents … And where are the lawyers & the tribunes of the people to redress these grievances?
    Oh, we need an Independent Commission all right. And I’m afraid there’s only one person I trust to head it: Jack Ryan. [Think of it as a 21st-century take on “Tinker, Tailor,” with Putin as Karla & Rex Tillerson as Gerald, the mole.] Ryan can call in the IMF, I hope, of course the Secretary has disavowed them, Malcolm Nance, Evan McMullin, the Washington press corps, and if he needs even more muscle, he has access to Jack Reacher, John Wick, and the Equalizer (plus the guy Gerard Butler plays in those “[your location here] Has Fallen” movies. And maybe Obama’ll come outta retirement in Act IV.
    Quis Custodies Ipsos Custodes, indeed.

*****
The point of all this is the saddest thing: Just How Much in Common Putin’s Russia & Trump’s America have with one another.
    The Soviet Union has gone up in chunks and Vladimir Putin, for one, is the Last Man on Earth who wants to resurrect it. His Russia is an Oligarchy (and he’s the Head Oligarch; the Wealthiest Man on the Planet). I daresay Trump knows him well enough to idolize him.
    [I’d love to see a dossier on Putin. I figure him as ruthless, expert @ tradecraft & the dark arts of espionage & subversion; as a Russian patriot and imperialist; also as an aesthete (he counts Grygyev as a friend!); not a European, though; and certainly not a Christian. There’s nothing of real Russian culture -- Tolstoy’s humanism, or Solzenitsyn’s conservatism -- in him. He’s one of Dostoyevsky’s Devils not one of his heroes…]
    The USA, too, is an Oligarchy.
    We have a Ruling Class, the One Percent, on which there are no checks & balances whatsoever; they do whatever they want; and when they run afoul of some old law or regulation that impedes them, they get our Tribunes of the People to change it, or ignore it or repeal it, or make sure it doesn’t specifically apply to Them.
    Why shouldn’t reactionary & counterrevolutionary elements in the Russian oligarchy collude with like-minded Americans in “arranging” their/our elections (all of which are polite fictions, anyway). Putin hated Hillary Clinton for getting up on her high horse & trying to influence Russian elections into being truly democratic (as if anyone in power could give a Flying Fuck what the Great Unwashed Thought About Anything).
And that’s Trump. He’ll tell you ANYTHING. And if he can’t think of anything germane, he’ll just fucking make something up. … He’s venal, greedy (my God!), vain, infantile, Narcissistic, sexist, and dystopian -- he has none of the Four Cardinal Virtues & displays every one of the Seven Deadly Sins shamelessly -- luckily, he’s too stupid to do any permanent damage.
    And he may even be a blessing in the long run, because We Elected Him. Maybe people will think next time … and maybe he is so out of touch that, like Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, he’ll start the conflagration out of sheer clumsiness. Unless, of course, 330 million people just don’t give a shit; give them their opioid suppositories & their NFL & their devices and internet porn, and repress all the niggers and wogs they’re afraid are going to steal their devices and you can probably get away with Fucking Anything. Or not. But we’re well on our way to finding out if you can, aren’t we?

13 March
Dear GOP,
    Congratulations!
    The tar baby now (and hereafter) known as ‘Trumpcare’ is SO YOU!!!
    Yes, it Actually lowers the deficit over 10 years, but it does the Big Stuff first: Cuts taxes for the Needy One-Percent & shifts the bill onto people (in districts you guys don’t represent) who are such slags that most of them are barely making $26,000 a year. Brilliant! [And fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke, especially that guy making $24K whose health bill goes from $1750 p/a to $14,355 under your plan; you are Not Expected to be bothered.]
    The GOP is the P of the Stakeholders. And these schmendricks have no Stake in anything.
    Just one little inconvenience: All these fools are also Trump Voters. Sure, Trump Voters make the Stepford Wives look like Bolsheviks but lower Federal health-care spending by one trillion dollars over the next 10 years and even these dim bulbs might figure out they’re being had. “Heap bad for White Chief”: Trump Voters might start blaming Trump for being the Lying, Psychotic one … “Heap bad for Tribe”: They might actually vote for a Democrat next time.
*****
    In the wake of that Twitter Tirade on “wiretapping” (06 March), the walk back from 1600 is making the Long March of Mao Tse-Tung seem like two centenarians running a 50-yd. dash. Now “wiretap” has air quotes around it, per Spicer, and -- Honest to God, we had no idea that accusing an ex-President of treason could be construed as a Felony (and actionable, even against a sitting President). Look, we just thought it was still the campaign ,,, is that so Wrong?
    So now the story is: there was “surveillance” and WE WERE SURVEILLED against our rights, and our wishes …
    And you know what? There was Surveillance: of the Russians. FBI tapped their phones; NSA had listening devices stuck up their rectums; CIA had ALL of them covered the second they crossed the border. They Bugged the Russians’ communications! And the little bonus in doing this is getting to hear the people On The Other End of The Fucking Call. Now, usually, it‘s just hookers (gender negotiable), but a lot of the time it was the other regulars, or: as they call them down @ the Precinct House: “The Trump Campaign.” 
30 March
• Tonite: Flynn volunteers to talk -- in exchange for immunity.
    Usually, the first guys trapped in the investigation tell their tales and get the most lenient sentences: “Yeah, you did it. The Truth’ll make you free. Six months in Danbury (you’ll serve seven weeks). Go away, and sin no more.”
    This time, the first name on the docket isn’t Segretti or Dahlberg or even one of the burglars: it’s the fucking Campaign’s National Security Adviser!! (Who all the while he was exhorting the lynch mob in Cleveland to “Lock Her Up!!!” was also a Paid Secret Agent [secret from -- well, everybody except his paymasters] for Putin ally Turkey.)
    Hand it to Comey. He only started in July but he went through the small fry like shit through a goose; he’s got the goods on Flynn in less than eight months. Flynn’s ready to sing “Vesti la giubba” to stay outta Danbury. God, would I hate to be Paul Manafort right now. … Not to mention Donald Trump. … Look, I always hoped we could just box this in: “the voters made a mistake, we’ll quietly fix it, paper it over with medical shit & a resignation, etc. Sorry. Nope. I think we really do have ourselves a Constitutional Crisis here. I just want to make sure it doesn’t end in a world war.
• FTR: Russia had a whole smorgasbord of Misinformation, agit-prop, fucking nonsense, etc., etc. -- which is STILL in place and being used to muddy any waters still standing. Know where Trump got the idea that Obama was wiretapping his campaign? (Of course, you do.) This is far from over.
    Let’s be fair: Nothing Russia did, hack wise, effected the vote count. It only effected/affected the voters. We’re not talking about election fraud; we’re talking about an Act of War v. the American electoral system & our ’free market of ideas.’ Anyone on our side who colluded with that attack, advised it, directed it, knowingly profited from it,
is a traitor.
• On the first day of the House hearings (almost two weeks ago), FBI director Comey stood up and called President Trump a liar about his “wiretap tweets,” then he said the Trump campaign has been in the FBI’s crosshairs since July 2016. He dared  Trump to fire him!!
    Nixon, even in extremis, had no compunction about firing Archibald Cox, even though his own Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, and Richardson’s deputy, William Ruckelshaus, both resigned rather than obey the President’s order. [The man who did fire Cox, Robert Bork, did it because he couldn’t see how it was illegal. But he did regret doing so; perhaps never more than when it helped cost him a seat on the Supreme Court he was extraordinarily well qualified for.]
    Tell you what’s funny about that first (and, since then, only) day of those House Committee Hearings: The Democrats (& Comey) tore Trump a new asshole, and all the GOP guys did was bitch about how awful & shameful & embarrassing LEAKS are and it’s gotta be stopped. Nunes let Schiff open with a 15-minute grand jury indictment & none of the Republicans said a single discouraging word about the Russians as they threw Trump under the bus!
• We’re still a long way, of course, from Grand Juries, but already tonight, Devin Nunes’ midnight escapades from earlier this week, going to the Eisenhower Bldg. on the WH grounds to see classified info that is literally “Eyes Only” & then going back to the WH to tell Blondie (right after he told his Speaker) but didn’t tell his Ranking Member or the rest o’ da committee is -- even before the first Grand Juror is sworn -- starting to conjure the Killer Phrase in all this conspiracy shit: Obstruction of Justice.
• The Burr/Warner Committee is negotiating to call MI6’s Christopher Steele to testify.
Nothing to do with politics …
****
Jimmy Breslin is dead. I’m betting he outlived Rosemary. Of all the writers I learned from, all the writers I’ve treasured all these years, he’s the one I stole the most from. I stole everything from him. I loved Hemingway & Chandler, but I couldn’t write like them, cause I didn’t know anything they knew. Jimmy Breslin wrote in the newspaper about the stuff I knew and he showed me how to do it. Give me a lotta credit here, cause what he did so effortlessly was so difficult to do: I filled a dozen Gregg notebooks 1965 ff writing about my day-to-day life and writing about it as if I were Jimmy Breslin, always looking for the weird characters, the O. Henry twists, the punch lines, the glib one-liners that made every Breslin story just POP: On arsonist “Benny the Bug”: the cop says, “we find gas cans in the place, they’re not paying off even if Eisenhower owns the building!”

On a happier note (but one Jimmy would’ve smiled at), I offer you some advice: If you’re ever just chatting with Barbara Stanwyck & she just casually mentions “accident insurance” -- just put on your hat, open the door & RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. [“… I killed him … for money and a woman. And I didn’t get the money & I didn’t get the woman.” … “Straight down the line, Walter.”]
    How much of that is Cain & how much is Wilder & Chandler? I dunno. … Anyone who remembers Fred MacMurray nowadays will remember “Flubber” & My Three Sons, but there was an Edge to MacMurray -- as the mutinous writer/instigator in “The Caine Mutiny,” as the lecherous office tyrant in “The Apartment,” as Walter Neff, the mild-mannered insurance man who kills both (!) the Dietrichsons -- this guy could be dangerous: “Straight down the line, Baby.”

31 March
• The Phillies current financial commitment to their entire 2018 roster is $6.8 million. (Think about that.)
• PBS stations are STILL using Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz” to raise money! The other night on WNJT was like August 1980whatever @ Broadkill Beach all over again (except for the sex & the seafood).
    It’s still the Quintessential Marty movie: (1) it’s a musical (2) it’s gorgeous looking and irresistibly watchable and (3) all of its lead characters are thoroughgoing second raters, guys who you wouldn’t want to share an elevator with let alone have a personal relationship with. To whit, Every One of the Guest Artists Who showed up @ Bill Graham’s Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving Day 1976 to perform @ this farewell concert is head and shoulders better than everyone in The Band.
    Marty was doing a LOT of coke @ the time (which explains those goofy interview segments) & was developing a long-lived man crush on Robbie Robertson (another undercurrent of the movie production that pissed off the rest of the guys, almost as much as the money they saw from the DVD’s et al., which was None.)
    Best Guest Performances (totally subjective): Neil Diamond, Paul Butterfield, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, “Caravan” !! … Hell, ALL the Guest Performances are fucking great!
    Guest Performance that I Never Before Realized Was That Great: Emmylou Harris
    Best Tagline: “Why do the best things always disappear?”

• Always wanted to see this movie and thanks to TCM On Demand, I’ve finally gotten to: Ishiro Honda’s 1954 (dare I say it?) masterpiece “Gojira.”
    You know damn well what this is because in the summer of 1956 you went to a local bijou to see the American version of it, something called “Godzilla, King of Monsters,” starring a Canadian-born Hollywood heavy named Raymond Burr as Steve Martin, a US newspaperman who narrates a tale about an Atomic monster who damn-near destroys Tokyo.
    The US version of “Gojira” is a mess, a grindhouse ripoff. But it’s a grindhouse ripoff of a Really Good Movie. The TCM version is Honda’s 1954 original, in Japanese with English subtitles, first seen here at various film festivals in 1982.
    Talking Points:
    (1) Plot: Professor Yamane wants Gojira preserved for study … pitting him against the swaggering salvage company captain, Ogata, who also loves Yamane’s daughter, Emiko, who, in turn, is betrothed to the enigmatic Dr. Serizawa, who obsessive study of Oxygen has led to a terrifying discovery: The Oxygen Destroyer, which removes all O2 from water.
    (2) Serizawa, in a moment of rashness, shows his device to Emiko, and swears her to secrecy. But after Godzilla’s second assault on Tokyo, all bets are off. She & Ogata go to Serizawa demanding he weaponize the Oxygen Destroyer. He destroys all his notes so no one else can ever build the device … and, as the script tells us, he destroys himself in the finale so that no one else can force him to remember how he built it in the first place. Harrowing stuff. And hanging over it all is the Hydrogen Bomb. H bomb fallout has revived Gojira ..
    (3) Honda & his producers wanted to do Gojira in stop action animation, which would have taken seven years and more yen than anyone of them could borrow … “Gojira” is an amalgam of the Japanese words for ‘gorilla’ and ‘whale’; they decided on a dinosaur Gojira instead. (At one point Prof. Yamane tells us Gojira hails from the Jurassic, which he says was two million years ago. Hardly.)
    (4) Point is: Honda knew on Day 1 his King of Monsters was a man (two men, actually, taking turns) in a rubber suit. So he did just what Spielberg did in “Jaws”: He held off as long as he could before showing you Gojira, racheting up suspense that’s been totally obliterated in the cut-and-paste Raymond Burr version.
    (5) And it’s the inspiration for my all time favorite Woody Allen ripoff: Speaking of my own love life, not Alvy Singer‘s, “I just wanted a relationship that would last as long as the one between Emiko and Doctor Serizawa.”

15 April
59 Tomahawk jet-propelled Cruise missiles (at a million dollars a throw) shot off o’ ships at a Syrian airfield and they didn’t even put potholes in the runways … The “Mother of All Bombs” -- 11 tons of TNT (at $1.45 million a ton) targeting ISIS in Afghanistan -- manages to kill anywhere from 36 to 94 of the fuckers (and how do they know that? Somebody go in and count?).
    This is your Commander in Chief, folks, Two Gun Trump. A man who never wore the uniform; and man who bent every loophole to make sure he would never have to wear the uniform, a man who has never heard a shot fired in anger (least of all one fired in his direction). A physical and moral coward. A golfer.
    OK, Golfer, what are you going to do about the North Koreans? (Besides just hoping the Chinese make them go away?)
    C’mon, amaze me.

As a faithful steward of the Public Purse, Two Gun, so far, is making Jack Sparrow look like the tight-ass down @ the DB Cooper Federal Credit Union who gave you that car loan back in 2013. This schmendrick has already pissed away more than $35,000 of the taxpayers’ money on (wait for it) GOLF CART RENTALS. … Each of the $1m missiles was a total write-off, but depending on getting an exact body count, we can make a pretty good estimate from the MOAB blast: One dead IS fighter costs us anywhere from $177,800 to $450,000. Think about that. 

While Congress is in recess (with GOP types avoiding their districts as if they were leper colonies) we’ve been treated to a week or so of Donald Trump the Clintonian: flip-flopping on a whole bunch of his Campaign Shit (suddenly sucking up to “currency manipulating” China, proclaiming NATO “solete,” shooting off rockets & bombs Whack-a-Mole style @ any Moslem who pops his head up anywhere in the Middle East); this in addition to running the first 15 (scripted) plays from the Clinton Playbook: fill the West Wing with unpaid advisors who just happen to be members of your own family, and hire a bunch of guys from Goldman Sachs to run the economy and plan your tax-reform agenda.
    MEMO TO MY FRIEND HUGH HEWITT: Don’t despair! Domestically, ol’ Two Gun is still Your Boy. He got Gorsuch onto the Court; he destroyed forever the time-honored tradition of Senate bi-partisanship, he let a bunch o’ states defund Planned Parenthood; he’s going to let Firefox sell Everybody’s browser history to Ashley Madison (no use trying to flog it to WikiLeaks; they already have it), oh! And he’s going to roll out version 2.0 of ACA Repeal, the no-frills version, which is basically Survival of the Fittest (and the rest of you can fucking die).  … He HAS to do health care first because “health care” is really just an elaborate way to put even more millions into the pockets of the One-Percent, and without it, his “tax reform” can’t be “deficit neutral.“
    Don’t be surprised, though, if Trump/Ryan “tax reform” is a National Sales Tax, what the Brits lovingly call the VAT.
    Know how not to pay sales tax? Don‘t buy anything. Lease it. Although you might wanna‘ think about buying stock in Rent-A-Center and Aaron‘s.